Let it snow, let it snow, let it Sno-FX

Derrick Penner, Vancouver Sun10.25.2013

John and Betty Quee’s firm Thomas FX just received a patent for their artificial snow products, which fall, drift and accumulate like real snow while being biodegradable.Jenelle Schneider
/ Vancouver Sun

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, 2008 movie. Artificial snow effects by Thomas FX Group Inc., of North Vancouver...
/ Handout photo

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Viewers might not think twice about the snow falling in winter scenes of movies such as Night at the Museum or X-Men, but for North Vancouver’s Thomas FX Group Inc., how it looks is important.

Is the artificial snow as white as the real deal? Will it fall as gently, blow around and accumulate the same way real flakes do?

Thomas FX, a 45-year-old special effects supplier that provides everything from breakaway glass to pyrotechnic effects to the film business, has come up with a formula and a process for fake snow that hits all those marks and is biodegradable on top of it, said company CEO John Quee.

And following a nine-year effort, the firm’s principals have just recently won Canadian and U.S. patents on the product, which goes by the name Sno-FX.

“We saw a need in the market that wasn’t being met,” Quee said. “The colour of existing artificial snow wasn’t white enough, the granularity wasn’t consistent enough, there was debris in a lot of artificial snow products.”

Some, Quee added, is made from shredded plastic bags.

Quee and his wife Betty started on developing a biodegradable option starting in late 2001. It cost just over $1 million, some of that coming from federal science research grants, and took a year-and-a-half to perfect.

Since then, the bio-snow has made appearances in movies such as X-Men, Night at the Museum, Four Brothers and Deck The Halls with Danny DeVito, and on television in CBC’s Arctic Air.

Sno-FX also has been coloured grey to double as volcanic ash in the Hollywood blockbuster 2012.

Retailers ranging from Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren to J. Crew and Coldwater Creek have used it in window displays or catalogue photo shoots.

Quee said that when they first started marketing the product, Betty approached Canadian Tire as a potential customer and was connected with the New-York-based distributor that Canadian Tire buys from.

“They ordered a container over the phone because they were looking for something biodegradable,” Quee said.

The company’s customers even include wedding planners, who like the biodegradable nature of coloured bio-snow as a replacement for confetti to throw at weddings.

“Shopping malls use it to decorate their Santa’s Villages,” Quee added. “It’s (uses are) more prevalent than you could imagine.”

The patents, Quee said, are important for Thomas FX because they want to expand their market. The company makes its snow in North Vancouver, but because it’s extremely light, transporting it is “like shipping air,” and is too expensive to ship abroad.

Quee wants to try licensing Sno-FX for manufacture in Europe, South America and even South Africa.

How big a business biodegradable artificial snow is “we don’t know yet,” Quee said. “But wherever movies are being made in the world, wherever there are retail stores that recognize Christmas and wherever there are people putting (artificial) snow on Christmas trees, there is a market.”

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